When the body of aged hotel owner Piet Jansen is discovered amidst the ruins of a rarely visited archaeological site by the Nile, Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police expects it to be an open-and-shut case. But the more Khalifa finds out about Jansen, the more uneasy he becomes. He is reminded of an earlier death - the brutal murder of an Israeli woman, for which he always suspected they'd convicted the wrong man.What begins as a routine investigation rapidly turns out to be anything but.